The Great Anarchists

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Noam Chomsky: The Last Anarchist Professor Feb 03, 2026

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The fascinating linguist and research-heavy political commentator who helped get anarchist theory through a particularly fallow period.

The Decline of Anarchism in the 20th Century Jan 15, 2026

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In the 20th century, anarchism ceased as a mass revolutionary movement (except perhaps in Spain in the 1930s). Why? I give three reasons here: the internal momentum of the state, reaching its culmination as a war and genocide machine; the internal direction of the left, particularly around Bolshevism, toward extreme statism (from welfare state liberalism to socialist state control of the economy to state communism); and the terrible strategic and ethical mistake that anarchists made around 1900 to engage in assassinations, bombings, and acts of terror.

Leo Tolstoy (and William Lloyd Garrison): Anarchism, Pacifism, and Christianity Jan 06, 2026

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Can you be a religious anarchist? Bakunin probobly thought not; Emma Goldman thought so. But any way you look at it, Tolstoy was a beautiful writer with a beautiful Christian vision. I agree with him, and Petr Chelčický, and William Lloyd Garrison, that Christianity is incompatible with human government.

PS pacifism entails antistatism

Art of Anarchism: Emma Goldman Jan 03, 2026

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The brilliant speaker and inspiring visionary (1869-1940): from Haymarket to the McKinley assassination, from confronting Lenin in his office to the Spanish Civil War. Alexander Berkman. Nestor Makhno.

Anarchism Without Adjectives (But With Great Passion): Voltairine de Cleyre Dec 28, 2025

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The great American feminist and anarchist emerged from the American individualist tradition into the communist anarchist movement of Johann Most and Emma Goldman. Voltairine de Cleyre was also the greatest anarchist prose stylist this side of Thoreau.

Peter Kropotkin, Greatest of the Anarchist Thinkers Dec 17, 2025

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Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a fine scientist as well as revolutionary: perhaps the greatest anarchist intellectual.

Mikhail Bakunin: Anti-Authoritarian and Anti-Marxist Leftist Dec 09, 2025

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The split between Bakunin and Marx, between "authoritarian communism" and "collectivist socialism" (in Bakunin's terms) represents the key moment in the history, and the tragedy, of the left.

Max Stirner and Egoist Anarchism Nov 25, 2025

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A wild and bizarre genius whose one book garnered momentary attention, especially from Marx and Engels. He's very closely connected to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, in my view.

I quote a blog entry from Alexander Green:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-green-stirner-and-marx

Lysander Spooner Kicks Your Ass Nov 20, 2025

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From basic American or Lockean or classical liberal values, Spooner (1808-1887) proves that anarchism follows. Proves it, I say. The killerest of the American individualists. If we have equal unalienable rights, anarchism follows immediately and obviously.

lysanderspooner.org

Henry David Thoreau: State and Slavery Nov 13, 2025

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Our best writer, maybe. The assertion that he's an (individualist) anarchist is based on "Civil Disibedience," but Thoreay expresses these positions throughout his authorship.

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